I was in the mood for a disturbing story, so I picked up The Cellar by Natasha Preston since it was about the disappearance of sixteen-year-old Summer Robinson. The kidnapper, Colin Brown, a.k.a. Clover, kept Summer and three other girls he deemed worthy of being beautiful, pure and innocent in his obsessively tidy but hidden hideaway in the basement of his home.

Told from the perspectives of Summer, Clover and Summer’s boyfriend, Lewis, the first chapter started out with Summer’s point of view. Her abduction happened right away, and I loved how one minute Summer was living her normal life and the next minute she was fighting for it.

However, I also felt like Summer had the opportunity to fight back better here because even though Clover did surprise her, who he renamed Lily as he was taking her, he didn’t drug Summer or restrain her when he got her into his van. He was even busy driving. At that point, I couldn’t help but think, Summer couldn’t do more to get away with all these freedoms? And why was Clover giving Summer so much leeway anyways?

But then I thought, okay. Summer’s in shock, her world’s just turned upside down and fear can be a powerful thing – I get that. Still, from the style of the writing itself, I got the feeling this story wasn’t going to be as intense or as well-written as I’d originally thought it would be. Maybe this book ended up flopping for me because I’d just read Travels in Siberia and The Onion Girl not that long ago. I think since, in my opinion, both of those authors had done such a wonderful job with their writing that when I went from them to Preston, it just felt like The Cellar could’ve used more work to make the promising premise of this more creepy, more natural and more invested for a reader – at least, that’s how it came across to me.

Because the way Lily, Clover and Lewis all acted and the things they said felt off for me throughout the entire book. Combine that with how the story jumped between the present and the past (though this time shift was clearly labeled with whoever’s perspective it was), all of it together just felt like it didn’t flow very well for me. Ultimately, I found the story to be choppy and this detracted from that dark and twisted atmosphere I’d been looking for this time around in my reading.

To be fair, I did like how Clover renamed all four girls as different flowers and addressed them as such. Because in addition to Lily/Summer, there was Rose, Poppy and Violet, but I wasn’t sure why Clover settled on four girls since his point of view never explained that. 

One thing that popped into my head to fill in that blank was how Colin chose to call himself Clover around the girls he kidnapped. Since four leaf clovers are rarer and considered good luck, maybe that’s why Clover liked the number four? Because the girls were lucky that he “saved” them? Because, in his mind, Clover was protecting them by bringing them into the “perfect” family he’d always wanted away from the silence/emptiness of his own loneliness. This could’ve been why Clover liked the number four since he did feel pride in creating the cellar for his Flowers. But, then again, maybe it had nothing to do with the girls, and Clover just thought of himself as the lucky one to finally have what he felt he was owed?

At any rate, I also liked how Clover kept the girls’ respective flowers in vases and how he expected his Flowers to keep the plants alive despite the lack of sunlight. This showed another way of how Clover’s mind worked and how unreasonably demanding he could be, especially when he expected his Flowers to clean up the dead prostitute’s bodies whenever he killed them in the cellar. But as awful as that sounds, it was the way it all happened that kept taking that awful feeling away. Instead, as the book went on, all the murders and blood shed only chipped away at the idea of awful that I’d started with until this feeling was entirely gone, which was an unexpected effect for me. 

I think this happened because a penknife definitely wasn’t an impressive weapon to use for murder, but it didn’t have to be if the killing itself had been more believable. Because I didn’t think one stab in the gut with this kind of weapon was going to finish the job as quick as it did in the story – at least not for a little while depending on where Clover stabbed the women in the belly. Because unless he’s eviscerating them along with that single stab or stabbing the women in their hearts instead, it just felt like the women he killed died way too fast for what he did. But maybe that’s just me.

Even though the way Clover killed wasn’t all that for me, why he used the penknife still could’ve run much deeper to balance out how I was feeling about this story. Personally, I would’ve liked to have seen more with that penknife beyond the obvious fear of Clover’s killing with it in front of the Flowers. After all, readers get the benefit of Clover’s perspective at times, and I was hoping this would be maximized on to bring someone like me back from meh. At the end of the day, I’d picked up this story for its horror aspect, basically for Clover, and I was looking for what his demented idea of a perfect family really was. I wanted to be surprised with something dark and twisted that went out of the ballpark of what the Flowers thought.

But this never happened.

Despite that disappointment, I did think it was interesting how Clover always had the more seasoned girls explain things to any new Flower and gave the newbies time to adjust to their new “family” before he raped them, which he really saw as his loving them. That was an interesting surprise about Clover because I thought it was different. 

At the same time, Clover’s waiting also gave me the impression that if he needed time to “fall in love” with his Flowers versus not waiting before he sexually assaulted them, then he had to have also known on some level that hope of escape still lingered for the girls during this transition. I felt how this could’ve gone somewhere, and I was waiting for more distinction with Clover in this regard in what else he could’ve been doing to ensure he killed the Flowers’ hope of ever being any part of who they’d once been. However, I ended up feeling like there wasn’t anything unique there that really popped out at me.

I also felt the potential for more in how Rose had come to accept the life Clover gave her. After being in the cellar for three years, Rose seemed mostly content to be there. Originally, this presented as another interesting development for me in wanting to see how her brainwashing played out with the other Flowers since they hadn’t given up on anything yet. But this supposed clash in beliefs/desires between Rose and the other Flowers ended up not going anywhere, and I felt let down again that this was the case. Instead, Rose came off as wishy washy instead of too far gone.

Unfortunately, discouragement was becoming all too familiar, but I was still hoping the knitting needles would be different. I was initially surprised Clover was letting the Flowers have pointy objects that could be turned into weapons, and I got that looking forward to seeing how this played out feeling again since I’d been waiting to delve deeper into Clover’s mind. Because I thought maybe the real reason Clover let the Flowers have those knitting needles was because he was testing them. If any of the Flowers used the knitting needles against him, then they were dead. Or maybe Clover was subtly telling the Flowers:

“Here. Have the knitting needles because having them won’t make any difference. The four of you have always outnumbered me down here but you’re all still here even though all I ever have is just my penknife. And now, even when I tease you all with the whispers of escape, you’ll all still be here because dead or alive, with or without hope, my Flowers will always belong to me.”

Ooo, yeah, either one of those things definitely would’ve worked for me. Alas, giving the Flowers the knitting needles was never a test nor subterfuge in Clover’s mind. On top of that, none of the Flowers even thought to use them as weapons despite how close Clover let them get to him. But it didn’t have to be either one of those things that I came up with – just something deliciously deleterious besides his approving of their wanting to knit and wanting to make the Flowers “happy.”

Wait, what? That was why? (Sigh.)

However Clover’s own deeper undercurrents could’ve gone with his Flowers, this would’ve definitely made his character stand out better for me through the rare ingredients of his “recipe” and how those things had gotten there. Because the person Clover came to be was partly due to his so-called mother, since she forced her will on him when he was still a child and took his control and many other things away from him because of what his father did –  which, is clearly not fair or right to impose on a child. But I ended up having so many questions there where Colin’s parents were concerned that I didn’t really understand why his past was brought into it when I was left with so many holes from it.

Clearly, I was left wanting in many places and felt left in the dark at times, especially where Clover’s mom was concerned. But I’m pretty sure my let down with this story rings loud enough as it is. I really wish I could give The Cellar a better review, but I just wasn’t feeling this one at all from the way everything came across to me.

Whenever this happens though, I always tell myself the story wasn’t written for someone like me. In all honesty, probably I can sometimes overthink things way too much, too. On the flip side, I loved the book cover image as it was part of what drew me in, and I thought Preston was brave to try to write a serial killer. But, sadly, Clover turned out to be memorable for me in a falling short kind of way. Sorry.